A/N: I feel the need to preface the next three chapters by saying telling you that they're extraordinarily long. At least 10k each. I felt it necessary at the time I wrote it. (I still do think it had to be this way). I also think there's a bit of head-hopping as the camera follows one character and picks up with another, but I tried to smooth those transitions so it became clear that the baton was being passed along. Apologies if that's not something you care for in a narrative.
"Drop Dead Legs, pretty smile
Hurts my head, makes me wild"
"Drop Dead Legs" – Van Halen
"Well why not? We need an arse-load of new consumables, and there's no reason I can think of that they shouldn't include potions that restore the player's magic—other games have them. I mean, yeah, it's not exactly original, but it's sort of a core game mechanic, Sev. Having the player wait for their meter to refill or having to go get a blessing from the oracle is causing a lot of irritation with our fans—"
Snape exhaled deeply through his nose, knowing the receiver would pick up on the sound. He wasn't sure whether he was more irritated with the premise of the new game mechanic or the fact that Declan ("Oh but call me Dec—I insist!") persisted in calling him by that nickname that he preferred no one use. He'd decided nigh on thirty years ago that he'd never wanted to hear it uttered ever again. No one else was entitled.
In all honesty, he really hadn't liked that Lily had used it.
"I can think of no conceivable way that a potion would restore one's magical ability in the way you're proposing, particularly not when the ingredients include such banalities as kelp and pig trotters." He massaged his nose, feeling the beginnings of a mighty headache manifesting at the apex of his eyes and the overlarge proboscis. "Besides, other games may require it, but our game doesn't rely on magic for combat. Even the conjurers rely primarily on fetishes for casting power."
"Yeah, about that—the team has been considering changing that word to something else."
Snape rolled his eyes, knowing Declan couldn't see him. "Do whatever pleases you, you always do anyway."
"Ah... good then."
"What? Did you expect me to put up a fight on that front? You ask me to write the entire backstory, justify the lore behind each class, but find endless fault with what I produce. If the proper use of the word fetish is therefore so distasteful to you, by all means, change it."
"We've received a number of complaints on that score, Severus. Not from players, but there's a rather well organized... and loud... contingent of mothers who are wanting to bar their children from playing because of it. Couldn't they wield staffs or, I don't know, a wand or something—"
"Not wands."
Declan snorted, though whether it was from amusement or out of a sense of derision it was difficult to say over the phone. "Why not wands? Mind you, I'm not married to the idea either—"
Snape glanced around, knowing that seated as he was on the front porch, his mother likely wasn't there to overhear the conversation. Neither were any other residents, for that matter. It was far too cold in mid-December for it to be comfortable for most of their old bones.
"Just not wands, Declan. And staffs are what you had in the first place: the critics panned that as being unoriginal. I contend that it still ought to be a small object, hand-held—"
"But not a wand," Declan ground out, a touch sardonic.
"No."
"If you're going to be difficult at least do me the favour of pitching a suggestion. What do you like? Talisman? Idol? Trinket?"
"Trinket is trite."
"Fucking obviously. My point is that you're being unhelpful. I don't mind fetish myself, the point is that we have a game we need to keep people paying for—it seems a small matter to change this tiny bit of verbiage in order to prevent a proper catastrophe."
Severus thought for a moment. His eyes roving the deserted street. His mind was elsewhere even as he observed the swirling eddies of snow that blew about hither and thither. "Don't we already have the source code for gloves?"
"As a cosmetic adjustment. We were going to release the option of equipping them in a few months—"
"Adapt them for use as a weapon. The glove could work to concentrate the conjurer's power as an extension of his arm."
Declan paused and didn't answer immediately. It sounded as if he were speaking to someone far away on his side. After a beat he received a response. "That could be cool. I'd have to speak to the design team. I can imagine some of them, like the higher level equips, having cool things like gems or golden rings or the like. I think I like it—"
"Great," Snape drawled, knowing he was being a tad uncharitable. He leaned his back against the brick of his mother's abode. From a distance he could see a head of brown curly hair approaching along the sidewalk, though the woman it belonged to didn't look up from watching her boots. The wind was too unforgiving. "If all you needed me for was to sign off on destroying my own creations, please, don't hesitate to call again."
"Don't fucking be like that, Sev. You know this wasn't my decision. Anyway, how is work on the new starting quest going?"
"It's going."
Declan chuckled warmly. "As ever. Well, me and the lads expect to see something at the party—"
"The party?" Snape asked, finding himself distracted by Granger's approach up the stairs. When she'd finally looked up at him (disguised as Tony Adkins though he was) she still seemed utterly flummoxed at the sight of him talking into a mobile telephone. He covered the receiver with one long hand. "On a call, Granger—" he mouthed, and he jerked his head toward the door, indicating that she should leave him be.
The damned woman never was good at following directions—at least when it came to meddling (In her school days, she had nearly followed directions too well, the inclination to kowtow to authority undermining any sort of creativity she might otherwise have displayed in her reasonings or procedure). She merely set her bags down on the porch and leaned against the bricks herself, observing him with a maddening, ponderous quirk of her lips.
He gave her his most venomous glare—and was only alerted to the fact that it lacked its normal vigour (or perhaps otherwise wouldn't have affected her anyway) when she had the temerity to giggle at him.
"—invitation months ago. Everyone's coming. You'll be expected—"
"By whom? No one knows I write for you."
"The higher ups do. Most of the original developers—you know them too, you know there's at least ten to twenty people who know you: sometimes you work out of the office."
"I'm more worried about everyone else you've invited knowing."
"They won't have to," Declan whinged, "You can just be some bloke—"
"Some bloke invited to an extremely exclusive event hosted by the developers for one of the premier internet games hosted out of the United Kingdom?"
He heard Granger snort beside him, and when he turned his head to send her a censorious glance, he found her stifling a smirk and shaking her head.
Curiously, he couldn't help the small smirk that formed on his own lips in response.
"It's not just a party, Sev. It's a bit of a meeting before the event drops. Not the last meeting we'll have, mind you—but Terry and Charlie want to see what you've been workshopping. Everyone's going to have to show a bit of what they've been working up—there's just so little time. The meeting itself with me and the devs will be private."
Snape sighed, rubbing again at his nose—the offending appendage was now pinking up from the cold. He felt his migraine returning with a vengeance. "When? I'm assuming this will be at headquarters?"
"Friday. The party goes from after work at six to however long people are arsed to hang about—but I'm guessing you'll want to be there early if you want to simply present your work and leave."
"Marvelous," Severus sneered. "You tell Charlie not to get any bloody ideas about introducing me to anyone—"
The response was immediate, and far too jocular to suit Severus' annoyed mood. "Why? Are you bringing someone? A female someone?"
His face darkened with irritation and out of the corner of his eye he could see Granger eying him with uncertainty. "No, you daft git—and wouldn't it serve you right if I were gay or something,"
Granger's eyes widened. This was a bloody nightmare!
"Go inside!" he mouthed to her again, his eyes fierce.
Damn the girl. She approached him cautiously and whispered in an urgent undertone: "It's okay if you are, you know—" at the same time that Declan finally found his voice to respond: "Oh! I... that's obviously fine... I mean... are you?"
Torn between answering, and not knowing who was being more annoying at that moment, he barked his answer to the both of them: "I'm not!" And then to Declan: "It would merely serve you and Charlie right if I were and you'd been pushing every clinger-on bimbo that hung around headquarters at me for the past six years—"
"Well excuse me for trying to be a mensch, Sev—I won't bother in future,"
"Yes, well, far be it for me to thank you for such due consideration." He drawled, his voice bitter with both irritation and some irony. "I'll see you at the party." He finally ground out, his teeth pressed together painfully.
"See that you do."
The call ended.
Snape rounded on the brunette, drawing himself up in height. "What part of 'Go inside' did you fail to understand?"
Hermione merely blinked at him. The action of it was very nearly lazy... or perhaps unimpressed would suit better. "I was curious."
"Oh! Merlin fucking preserve me from Hermione sodding Granger when she's curious—what gave you the impression you were welcome? What gave you the impression that you were entitled to know the details of my conversation?"
The small witch had the gall to smile at him, "You know all about what I do, you listened in on plenty of conversations between me and your mum, that I imagine wouldn't have happened if you were yourself," she said, waving an arm at his face, still glamoured. "Perhaps I was in the mood for a little quid pro quo."
She dropped her bags beside her and made herself comfortable, sitting on the stoop next to him, and too close for his comfort. "What has you hiding out here anyway? Does Eileen not approve of your new profession?"
"My mother doesn't understand my new profession, and it's a pain in my arse to try and explain it to her." His tone was acid, but he'd still been surprisingly candid with her.
He noticed a look of sympathy forming on her delicate features, the sight enough to turn his stomach. "Don't go thinking I'm saying that out of self-pity, Granger. It's just a fact. She's a witch. Beyond that, she's a woman of a... certain generation. It doesn't translate well."
The witch nodded in comprehension. "I think I understand. I work with clients older than your mother, and while I find her easier to talk to than them, probably because she lived for so long as a muggle, I imagine explaining computers to her is... frustrating."
"It's hopeless." He drawled with dry humour.
"So..." Granger dawdled, looking for her next line of inquiry, surely, "Is it that she doesn't approve?"
"She's just happy that I have a job. She knows I make enough, though she can't imagine how much." he returned, his voice even, though his lips had twisted in that small quarter smile. "And she understands that I can't work in the magical world anymore. All things considered, I think she understands that this is a far better profression for me than being a professor was."
Hermione studied him closely for a few moments. The silence grew between them and Severus felt the urge to hide his face—though he remembered that his hair as Tony was insufficient to do so, being that it was short and rather tufty.
"I think it suits you, sir."
"Don't call me that."
She sighed deeply and appeared cross. "I don't like calling you 'Snape,' it seems rude."
"And yet, it is my name."
"Fine then. Be difficult," she said, her butterscotch eyes lighting up with mischievous delight. "I won't wait for the invitation: I'm calling you 'Severus.' Your mother insisted I do so while you were absent, and I see no reason to quit now that you're finally here."
"Of all of the insolent, insufferable—" he began, before she held up a mittened hand to him, her face bored.
"Oh, quit it—you were never going to give me permission, and we're stuck together here for two weeks. I have no intentions of leaving your mum to fend for herself after that period. You might as well grant me the license of calling you as you are. I can't make you call me 'Hermione,' and I'm sure your surly self will take great pleasure in avoiding it at all costs, but you're welcome to it, and I'm on to you. I'm on to your game. Frankly, it's childish and beneath you, but that's not stopped you before so I don't imagine it will now."
"Fuck you, Granger—"
"Mmhmmm! I thought so!" She said, grinning in triumph. "Score one for me." Her infuriating smile had her eyes alight with laughter. Laughter at him.
Snape's fists clenched in his jeans, he growled low in his throat, and Granger? She simply giggled at him and rose to enter Eileen's house.
The short witch closed the door with a soft snap behind her as she glanced around the small entryway. "Eileen? I'm done working now—what would you like for dinner?" She called, her eyes on her heavy market bag.
"Not so loud, Ms. Granger, I can hear you quite well," came the tetchy reply.
Hermione glanced up to see that Eileen was indeed a mere eight feet or so away from her, reclining on the settee. She had her ankle elevated on a pillow as she clicked and swished her knitting needles in a smooth cadence. The ankle was healed, though it still gave her trouble with pain every so often.
The brunette was surprised to see that in the sitting room there was a new television set, turned to a channel with a couple of older ladies cooking a Christmas roast.
"Where'd that come from?" Hermione asked, slightly dumbfounded. Just the day before it hadn't been there.
"Severus set it up for me—it's a mystery that these houses have electricity, and yet they didn't think to add any lamps or overhead lighting," Eileen griped, clearly still feeling upset over the month in the summer she'd suffered in darkness.
Hermione shrugged, feeling slightly out of her depth. She didn't really care to defend the Department for the lapse, but it was indeed thoughtful of them to have provided electricity to the residents, particularly as a handful of them had come from muggle backgrounds. "Yeah, Er... well, it's an oversight I won't be making again."
"See that you don't." the older woman sniffed.
"Yeah, so—dinner?"
"I was thinking a stew." The knitting needles didn't cease, however.
Hermione couldn't help but to offer a small smile, though Eileen wasn't looking up to see it. The woman and her son could be so alike that it was frightening sometimes. Apologies only seemed to inflame their tempers, but practicable solutions and little services here or there went a long way in smoothing over her seemingly innumerable missteps. "I'll start chopping vegetables."
"Good. I'll send Severus to help when he comes back in."
Cooking with Snape—that'd be fun. She sighed to herself as she made her way to the kitchen and began pulling out a proper stew pot. She started a few pounds of steak browning in butter and left the outer bits to develop a nice crust whilst she pulled together the components of her mirepoix.
Within five minutes she had the house smelling pleasantly of cooking beef, and she removed the cubed steak, using the spine of her knife to scrape the onions, celery, and carrots into the rendered-out fat and butter. The hiss they produced at hitting the hot steel was very nearly sinful, and the smell was, by contrast, heavenly.
That was how Snape found her, moments later. Her frizzy head leaned directly over the stew pot, her small, delicate nose trying to inhale the aroma for all it was worth.
She heard his snicker before she saw him, and had to turn around, mortified and red-faced.
"That steam is doing nothing for your hair, you know."
Indeed it wasn't. It was beginning to bush out in all directions and had lost any semblance of shape or form that she may have coaxed it into that morning.
"Incidentally, I believe I always told you not to place your idiot Gryffindor head directly over the cauldron, silly girl."
Hermione straightened and met his gaze. "But this isn't a cauldron. It's our dinner. And I maintain that you'd have a hard time not wanting to stick your nose in it too if you were the one preparing it." She lifted her chin in defiance.
"Yes, our dinner," he drawled, "which you will be burning if you don't deglaze the pan right this instant."
"Shit!" She turned back and observed that indeed the fond had pulled up around the mirepoix and was darkening past what she would have wanted. She grabbed for the wine but had forgotten to remove the cork prior to cooking. 'Fuck...'
"Allow me." Snape snatched the bottle from her and deftly twisted a corkscrew into the end, popping it effortlessly.
She almost couldn't hide her irritation. She always forgot something... and she also had always had difficulties opening wine bottles. "Thank you—"
But instead of handing it back to her, he poured it out himself, coating the bottom of the pan with a quarter of a litre. "The stock will be next, mind you—and then the beef again—"
"Yes, I know. Thank you." She was definitely irritated now. She dared to glare up at him. "I was doing just fine before,"
The damnable man was smirking down at her, his hip canted against the countertop. "Before you almost burned it, you mean?"
She drew in a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders, making an effort to slide back into a serene smile. He was clearly caught off guard by the change.
Didn't he realize she was a professional at dealing with tough customers?
"Be a dear, Severus, and chop the potatoes."
His frown was more flummoxed than furious. He looked about the small kitchen, as if trying to find what could have changed her demeanour so radically, before he made his way, grumbling, to scrub and peel the fat tubers in the sink.
Dealing with him became somewhat doable when she decided to treat him like either a rather recalcitrant client of hers, or like little James. Toddlers could usually be redirected from a snit if whomever was watching them solicited their help in the activity. She smirked into the stew, adding back the beef and its drippings.
"Here." He slammed the cutting board down next to her with ill grace, causing small bits of potato to scatter across the counter and onto the floor.
Hermione rolled her eyes at the display. "Nice."
That was before she got a proper look at the potatoes themselves. "What the hell have you done to them?" Her fingers sought a few pieces... slices? Wedges? Rounds? Some were cubed. "They're all different shapes and sizes!"
He merely shrugged at her. "You didn't specify."
"You git! It bet it took far more work to cut them like this! Now they won't cook evenly," her placid mask slipped then, and she found herself scowling at the dark-haired man.
"More's the pity." Snape shrugged. He made to back out of the room, her voice fading behind him.
"If your mum wants to know why some of them are soggy and some of them are too hard it'll be on your head!"
By the time Severus made it back to the settee to sit by his mother, he was snickering to himself.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing, Ma," he responded evenly, his voice all innocence and deceit as he sought out the clicker.
Suddenly there was a sharp Thwack! on his upper arm, the welt stinging immediately.
Now she had his attention: one of her long aluminium knitting needles was gripped in a pale slender hand.
"The hell was that for?!" He resisted rubbing the spot as best he could, even though it smarted quite a bit.
Eileen's eyes were alight with irritation as she pointed a thin finger in his direction, poking him in the chest with each syllable, hissing her words: "You will stop behaving like a child, you will treat Ms. Granger with respect, and you won't ruin my Christmas by fighting with her the whole time!"
"Merlin, tell her that," he muttered, giving in to the urge to rub out the stinging in his arm.
"Somehow I doubt she's the problem." His mother said, her voice tart. She slipped the offending needle back into the first loop of her row and tensioned the yarn around her pinky and over the nail of her forefinger with a deft movement. "And I'm not her mother, I'm yours."
"You're certainly acting the part," he murmured with evident resentment. He began channel surfing without paying much attention to what was passing by with each click.
His mother gave him a shrewd glance over the delicate lace she was labouring over, "If I didn't know any better, Severus, I'd say you were jealous—"
"Jealous? Of her?"
His mother smirked. "Perhaps. Or perhaps jealous of me." At his confused glance she merely turned her attention back to counting her stitches. "Don't think I don't know how boys treat girls they're interested in, young man—"
"I'm hardly a boy," he sneered. 'Or a particularly young man, for that matter.'
"You'll always be a boy. And I don't mean that in some sentimental sense as a mother, no. I mean that men never truly grow up—you're all boys. Even those of you with enormous responsibilities and undertakings are at your heart boys, and I've yet to meet one that doesn't thoroughly enjoy aggravating the object of his affection to the point of madness."
The needles shicked and zinged in the resulting silence, Snape finding himself curiously unable to respond.
"You were far too pleased with yourself for me to think you truly dislike Ms. Granger, oh no—I for one think you like her far more than you're comfortable with." Mrs. Snape smirked. She made it to the end of the row and turned her work to the other side, resuming at the opposite end this time.
Severus, for his own part, was incapable of doing much more than scowling in her direction. He turned up the volume on the local news until Granger called in to announce that their supper was ready.
No matter how loud the puerile observations of the anchors, none of them were obnoxious enough to make him forget his sense of unease and foreboding surrounding his mother's observations. He didn't like her. He. Did. Not.
The three of them arranged themselves in their usual configuration around the small table, each taking a turn to ladle spoonfuls of stew onto the plates, with Hermione taking it upon herself, as she often did, to pass around slices of bread. She'd set the table with water for each of them, which he sipped, finding himself grateful, even though aloud he let himself bemoan the lack of something alcoholic.
His mother kicked him with her uninjured foot under the table.
It seemed that Granger had solved the unintended riddle posed by his poorly cut potatoes by cutting them further into absolutely tiny cubes. They were evenly cooked, however, so he really couldn't complain.
A treacherous part of himself reminded softly that had they not been, it'd have been his own fault. But really—the blasted woman had practically asked for it.
Hermione eyed Snape inspecting the potatoes with a sense of ill-concealed satisfaction. Let him try and critique that! The lack of spirits had been a deliberate oversight. She didn't imagine Eileen would thank her for introducing them to her table, particularly given what the poor woman had lived through with her ex-husband, though Hermione didn't imagine Snape himself was any sort of lush, or the kind of man who would allow himself to overindulge at a family dinner. He didn't seem the type.
No. He was just trying to rile her up again. Hermione frowned into her beef and carrots. Why did he do that?
Conversation had a slightly different flavour than it had when Snape had been arriving at his mother's house in disguise. Eileen was no longer the solicitous and over-eager hostess, but now was her snarky self, and Hermione observed, seemed to take some sort of strange pleasure in reminding Snape as much as possible that he would always be in something of a diminutive position to her. It wasn't so nasty as her being outright condescending to her son, but rather—she didn't allow him the airs he seemed so eager to adopt while he'd stalked the corridors of Hogwarts.
He was an adult, yes, and he wasn't a dependent on her, but he was her son, and she'd not let him forget that for even a moment.
Privately, Hermione thought it was probably good for the man. Though he would sometimes balk at her treatment, much like Crookshanks when Hermione made the mistake of stroking him in the wrong direction, he'd usually pink up to his ears and sulk, in a most un-Professor-Snape-like fashion. It was almost charming. If she hadn't known the man as he'd been almost ten years before, she'd have thought he very nearly enjoyed it.
Oh, not the dressing down bits, but rather the fact that he had someone who knew him well enough, and cared deeply enough, to cut him down before he allowed himself to grow too pig headed for his own good.
Sometimes, Hermione would merely sit back and enjoy their banter back and forth, and the small snippets she learned about him and his life before Voldemort that she heard from the exchanges.
For instance, that he'd snuck off to Birmingham to see Motörhead in the summer before his fifth year, and additionally, that he could do a remarkable Lemmy Kilmister impression. A fact which he demonstrated when mocking his mother for taking him to task over his indiscretion some thirty years after the fact, notwithstanding that when he'd originally been found out he'd been beaten blue by his father for the incident.
"That was their first tour ever as Mötorhead," he asserted, his voice utterly smug before he began belting out a verse:
"Born to raise hell, born to raise hell, we know how to do it and we do it real well!" Snape crowed in a voice far more gravelly than his own.
Eileen scowled at her son repressively. "Desist!" she hissed at him, her eyes narrowed.
"I shan't," he replied, his nose in the air and a sneer about his lips, before he continued in an approximation of Lemmy's guttural growl "Voodoo medicine, cast my spell—born to raise hell, Born To Raise Hell!"
Hermione felt Eileen's foot fly out underneath the table to connect with Snape's shin, which only seemed to make his smirk broaden. "I see Ms. Granger's not the only one you enjoy aggravating," she groused, before she turned to her stew and, in her sulk, seemed to cut herself off from the two younger people at her table, leaving Hermione to wonder over her words.
Snape enjoyed aggravating her?
Well... it wasn't really a true revelation, was it? He'd always enjoyed aggravating her. This had a decidedly different flavour however. She couldn't put her finger on it.
It had all seemed to start with his petulance about the pudding nearly a month ago, and since they'd been entertaining his mother together had rapidly taken on new dimensions of provocation. He was never mean—not like he had been to her years ago—rather, he needled her. He seemed to preen at being able to exasperate her. It was entirely discombobulating.
She'd never quite been pushed in such a way... and she wasn't entirely sure she hated it. The worst part about the entire enterprise was that in her seething, after the fact, she found his smarmy quarter-grin to be annoyingly... cute. In the instances where she managed to confound him, as she had earlier by soliciting his help with the potatoes, she almost missed it, even as she celebrated her, rather temporary, victories. When he'd won the final round of that particular contest, she'd felt herself torn between wanting to smack him and wanting to wipe the look off his face by kissing him... well... perhaps not... but it would have shut him up, she was sure.
No. She did not want to kiss Snape. She did not want to aggressively plow herself into him to make him stop or to make him focus his considerable attention span elsewhere, namely on embracing her in some fashion. That wasn't on.
Following dinner, Eileen set out a baked dish she'd completed before Hermione had arrived. It was a curious thing: concocted of noodles and apple, held together with a sort of custard, and spotted with raisins and dried fruit. It was also incredibly sweet. Eileen called it a kugel, and told them a story of how she'd learned the recipe from an older Jewish woman whom she'd known in Cokeworth decades ago.
Far from drifting off, both she and Snape settled in to listen in silence as she went on about the family, the five little dears they'd raised, and how eventually they'd managed to leave behind the blighted industrial town for greener pastures.
It was moments like these where they were both reminded why they were there together in Waldweirness at all: Eileen needed them. She was an exceptionally lonely woman (not that either Snape or Hermione would admit to being exceptionally lonely themselves). They didn't have to play at being interested in her stories of Cokeworth in the middle of the twentieth century: rather, there was a genuine interest there. It was enough to put a halt to their snarking and repartee, and to settle them in to listen with an attentive ear to stories that seemed somehow more fantastical than ones that came out of the magical world itself.
Besides which, Snape had evidently found the unfinished wine Hermione had used for the stew, and had poured them both out a glass, though he took the trouble to fix his mother a cup of her favourite tea in its stead, knowing she'd refuse the drink.
It was with a sense of amiable companionship that they each sipped their respective drinks and urged Eileen on with questions, or in Snape's case, with small reminders of things his mother may have forgotten years after the fact.
It was nearing ten before Hermione began making noises about needing to get back to her flat. She was genuinely regretful that she had to leave.
"What are your plans for the week, dear?" Eileen asked pointedly. Her sharp eyes were following Hermione about the sitting room as she packed away a few items into her extendable bag.
"Well, I've got a party to attend Wednesday evening—"
"Why, that's tomorrow!"
"Yes," she said, pausing. Was it really? "I suppose it is..." Time seemed to pass quickly with the tiny family in the small house. "I'd prefer to be here, in all honesty, but if I can manage to leave early, I'll be here..."
"Well, I can't say we'll wait for you for supper, but I'll have Severus save you a plate."
Snape grunted and sipped at his wine, his eyes overcast. It was impossible to tell what he may have been thinking.
His mother turned her attention toward him. "You'll need to do the shopping for our meal tomorrow—I haven't anything in the larder,"
"That's fine, Mam. I've got a few things to collect from my apartment for work. They're expecting an update on Friday. I'll do the shopping while I'm in Nottingham."
"They'll ring, I assume?"
"No—I've got to attend a party of my own," he sneered. Here he looked as miserable about the prospect as he'd sounded on the phone earlier. "They throw one every year." He finished with a shrug.
"And what about your party, Ms. Granger?" Eileen asked.
"It's not for work, if that's what you mean." Hermione felt, if possible, equally miserable about her own prospective fête as Snape evidently did about his compulsory attendance at the Galdrvale event. "It's for my parents' orthodontic practice.
"I'll try to be back after," she said with a small smile. Neither Snape seemed to know quite what to say to her, and it wasn't evident whether they'd noticed her melancholy at the prospect, though she'd taken no pains to hide her apprehension. "I'll see you both tomorrow, in any case." Hermione finished with a tiny grin and a little wave.
Eileen saw her to the door and nodded stiffly at her, though Hermione could tell that the woman did dearly want to see her the next day. Snape only kept his black eyes trained on her as she backed out onto the porch. His expression was inscrutable to the last.
She slept fitfully that night, her dreams plagued with nameless, faceless anxieties. When she woke, she was aware of a distinct impression that she was dreading the upcoming party and that her dreams may have revolved in some manner around her parents.
The day leading up to the gathering was rather routine, mostly office work, which her coworkers gladly let her escape early from, not realizing that she'd have stayed late if only she could.
Back at her flat saw Hermione preparing herself near as carefully as she had done for war—and in a way it may have even been so. Clients. The disabled. The elderly, and infirm. The addled and those terrified of unnamed and indistinct terrors? Hell, Snape, his mother, and Voldemort himself: all paled in comparison to facing the intimidating figure posed by her own mother.
She attired herself with more consideration than she ever liked to pay her appearance, even struggling into a pair of nylon stockings and a flattering, if unbearably uncomfortable, dress for the despaired-of occasion.
Making this sort of effort was both a gamble and a sure bet. On the one hand, appearing in her usual attire, or anything less well-chosen would be met with ridicule and she'd be given to understand that she had embarrassed her mother shamefully. On the other, she knew that it opened her up to either matchmaking attempts by her parents or bids by the men with whom they were acquainted trying to solicit her attention.
She wondered, for a brief moment, what Snape might think of the get up, but then brushed the thought away as both irrelevant and offensive to her sensibilities. Why should she care?
Besides, when given the option to do so, the man clearly favoured dressing as comfortably and with as little fuss as he could manage. Since having seen him again, she'd only ever seen him dressed in jeans, rolled and cuffed snug at the ankle, his ubiquitous boots (the same since he'd been a professor), and a variation on either a t-shirt or a button-up, and either a leather jacket or a woolen cardigan to cover his arms (which still bore the mark of the Dark Lord).
Years ago, she may not have imagined ever seeing him so, but after more than a week of exposure, and a few meetings in his ill-chosen guise as Tony Adkins, he'd become a rather expected, if annoying presence in her life. Perhaps even comforting in his familiarity if she was allowing herself to be as honest as she could be.
It took some doing, but she finally managed to wrestle her hair into something approaching an acceptable style. In the end, instead of fighting the losing battle that was Sleekeazy's, she'd used a plain plastic clip to hold back the top-most layer of her hair and bangs at the back of her head. She'd gone with minimal makeup, only enough concealer to cover the stubborn spots and blemishes she courted on a daily basis, and a single coat of mascara.
She evaluated herself in the tiny mirror of her washroom. She still looked pale and drawn, her lips and cheeks hadn't even a touch of colour to them—but here she abjectly refused to draw additional attention. That would be far too much of an effort. She intended to hover by the table of catered snacks and to be able to actually enjoy them, unlike the women constantly checking their teeth for hints of smeared lipstick.
After her final once-over, she patted Crookshanks resolutely on his fluffy head, and locked the flat up behind her. She rang for a cab at the small pay-phone in the lobby of her building, and waited for it inside the protection of the front hall. She'd not worn a coat, and her elevated heels prevented her from wanting to hike her way out in her short skirt and stockings like some sloshed girl making her way back from a pub after hours.
She simply wasn't cut out for such a life, she reflected with a bit of a wry chuckle.
Once she'd safely nestled herself in the warmth of the black cab and had directed the cabbie toward the restaurant her parents had hired for their event, she tried to relax as much as she could let herself while the cabbie tried to draw her into a rather one-sided conversation about a popular television programme that, evidently, most of London was talking about. She'd never heard of it.
After a half hour of weaving through holiday traffic, he let her out with an affable grin, and she paid him in the notes she'd withdrawn earlier in the day at Gringotts.
The restaurant was a lovely place, the floor was immaculately tiled and polished to a gleam, and the staff were spiffed up and looked entirely uniform, offering platters of hors d'oeuvres and glasses of alcoholic refreshments.
She made sure to take one glass of wine to an empty corner and to drink it down in its entirety before she sought out her second glass and made any attempt at socialization or at finding her parents out amongst the various guests. Once she felt pleasantly fuzzed, she made her careful perusal of the assembled people and sought out her father's carefully coiffed curly head of hair, or her mother's tightly managed bouffant (though the woman would never admit it, she'd maintained the same style as Princess Anne for as long as Hermione had been able to remember).
Finally, the two were able to be located at the centre of a tightly packed throng of guests, shaking hands, cracking wise, moving here, shaking there, and generally being as solicitous as possible of their assembled friends, colleagues, rivals, and prospective associates.
"Hermione! Dearest!"
She was grateful it was her father who spotted her first. He carefully manoeuvered to embrace her, with one hand held away where his garnet-coloured Malbec was gripped by the stem of its crystal glass.
"You all remember our daughter," Robert Granger called to the mass of people about them. He had a hand clasped on her shoulder as he held her firmly in front of himself. In her heels, they were of a height, and once again, Hermione felt the sensation she'd become accustomed to throughout her childhood: that of being a model, trophy child. Trotted out to be admired and then stowed away for later. Perfect and immaculate enough in her behaviour and manner that they'd not risked having another (given their age at the time of reproducing, their very late thirties, it had been a rather risky preposition to try for a second).
They'd not accounted for the possibility of her being special needs—which was the way they sometimes explained it to others when talking about her school, far away in the north. How could they have assumed their healthy, hyper intelligent little girl would be recipient to the gift of magic, after all?
There was a chorus of greetings and various compliments. None of the compliments were paid to her directly.
"She's grown so gorgeous, Margaret!" It was one of their dental assistants from their old practice. A kind woman in her sixties now.
"How proud you must be!" Cried one of their suppliers. A man whom, if she was not mistaken, represented them when they were obliged to order certain drugs from government approved sources.
"Out of school already? My, I remember when she was only up to my knee—" This, from someone Hermione was quite sure she'd never met once in her entire life.
"Smart as a whip, I'll bet—with your brains, Robert, tell me she's considered continuing on at one of the Oxbridge colleges—" Hermione had to repress a scowl at this. Though she felt on some level that she might have been obliged to have been flattered, she instead felt slighted.
"How lovely, Margaret—though she wasn't blessed with your height or presence!" At this, she felt a definite prickle of savage irritation. Who did this old biddy think she was to measure her up to her mother—?
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from doing anything but smiling—her face feeling stiff and almost alien in its placid expression. She'd not had nearly enough wine for this.
Her mother received all of the praise on her behalf, responding to each well-wisher in turn, laughing gaily over the approbation. She leaned back as she laughed, her posture exaggerated and insincere as her hand squeezed the shoulder her father wasn't holding on to—it was probably only this that kept her from clapping her hands together in a demonstration of her delight.
Where Hermione and her father were standing eye to eye, her mother was another few inches taller still, even in her flat shoes. (Her bouffant added another inch and a half at least). She had always seemed impossibly tall to Hermione, whose diminutive height had come from her French paternal grandmother.
Margaret Cavendish-Granger was a woman whose force and gravitas were seemingly rivaled only by natural acts of God. Born into a diminished branch of the great and noble family Cavendish, she'd nonetheless been recipient of every possible advantage and privilege that could be garnered through either money or by means of a favourable birth.
She had been an only child of parents approaching middle age, and consequently, had not had to fight or jockey for favour as she might have had she been cursed with older siblings (notably, brothers). She'd attended a number of prestigious institutions for a range of interests before settling on dentistry, a rather strange choice, yet one she seemingly was passionate over.
Her good breeding had inculcated in her a number of bad habits, not least of which was her propensity to see other people's value to her advancement before she saw their value as individuals, her own daughter included. Yet, she still seemed to have a genuine joie de vivre that Hermione noticed was absent in some of her more illustrious relatives—those whose status tended to eclipse any ability to make authentic choices for themselves, whether in choosing their occupation or in their choice of spouse.
Still, where Margaret Cavendish-Granger had been allowed the luxury to be choosy in her career, her lifestyle, and ultimately her marriage to Robert Granger (another dentist, whom, while well enough off was certainly of lesser birth), she often seemed reluctant to extend the same courtesy to her only daughter: a young woman whose decisions she regularly sneered at or bemoaned as being impractical, unambitious, embarrassing, or at worst, downright shameful.
She had moments where she'd be generous, magnanimous almost. She'd not castigated Hermione over her betrayal, and she had sat and listened patiently as Hermione had explained the remainder of the war, her role in it, as well the circumstances that had led to her choice to temporarily put a block on her parents' memories of her. She'd taken it all in her stride, had declared that she'd grown to love Australia, had enjoyed the practice she'd opened there, and had made valuable contacts over the years.
Over time, Hermione had come to suspect that her mother didn't resent her entirely over the episode only because both she and her father had used the opportunity of being childless to further their education and careers—expanding their credentials to become trained in Orthodontistry—and had, by extension, been able to further expand their business to become what was now Granger Orthodontics, which they'd opened as a private practice upon returning to England.
They'd not objected to Hermione staying with them to continue her education—it had been a time where Margaret had crowed with approbation for the young woman—every associate willing to listen to her was treated to Hermione's mother opining on how very alike her daughter was to her: a consummate scholar, ambitious and driven in the extreme, never satisfied with a stone unturned or a question going unanswered.
The sticky business of her transition back from a Wilkins to a Granger she allowed Hermione to handle in its entirety, which Hermione did not begrudge her, as it was her fault that her mother and father had all but gone missing and had to be reincorporated into their identities while abroad. It had taken large doses of Hermione's skill at memory charms to put the situation to rights, but all things considered, Hermione had been so relieved to be received by her parents with open arms that for years she'd not questioned the lack of upset.
The dust up had come much later, when, upon finishing her degrees and her research into Luenfeldter's, Hermione had summarily decided to take a low-paying job in the magical civil service, and had become a rather minuscule cog in the machine that was the Department of WOE. Her mother, and to a lesser extent her father, simply could not understand why their brilliant daughter would stop short of pursuing more, in whatever form that took.
No longer could they brag to friends and family alike about her accomplishments, her grades, the favourable impression she made on teachers and instructors.
A particularly nasty fight had come at some point after they'd all relocated back to their country of origin, in the aftermath of which Hermione finally found it necessary to find her own flat, away from their disparaging commentary.
Her mother had all but accused her of wasting her talents, her parent's money, her family legacy, not to mention her parent's patience, in accepting a job where her primary responsibility was to care for others too ill to care for themselves. This alone was nothing new, but the final sarcastic suggestion of the night was that Hermione may as well marry immediately, get herself up the duff, and resign herself to an existence of barefooted drudgery and perpetual pregnancy, in thrall to some brute who wanted nothing so much as to keep her cossetted and away from the world.
"Good for nothing more than motherhood," Margaret had finished, tartly.
That had been the final straw.
Perhaps, when she'd stormed off with the entire stock of her possessions crammed into her tiny evening bag, and Crookshanks yowling under one arm, they'd imagined she'd taken righteous offense to being assessed as so worthless. Perhaps that was so—but it wouldn't have been true.
The tenor of Hermione's frazzled thoughts were far different as she had escaped in a fit of tears.
For what was so wrong with wanting to be a mother?
Why would it be so bad to devote herself single-mindedly to an aim that put another before herself? Even if for the rest of her life?
She'd already decided it filled her with far more purpose to fulfill that aim working, as she did, for the safety and well-being of her clients.
What was a career—what was scholarship—even for, if not for her to share, abundantly, with those she felt were most dear to her?
Who said that a life with a man whose aim was her own safety and care would be so bleak and heinous? Who said she wouldn't find more freedom in setting her own days, devoting herself to any project which, perchance, should catch her fancy? Where any and all topics she may wish to research or lobby for would have the full benefit of her, not inconsiderable, attentions and passion?
She had thought of Molly. Though Hermione herself had no desire to have seven children, the implication that Molly Weasley was some beaten down woman with a lack of agency or ambition was laughable, and honestly, hurtful. How could her mother say as much when her own care for her daughter paled in comparison to the sense of serenity Hermione felt in the quiet and supportive presence of the Weasley matriarch?
In the couple of years after that row, Hermione had certainly not tried to seek out the company of some such 'brute' as her mother had described to her. She'd not gone dating, nor had she gone out of her way to make her latent, but no less fervent, desire to be a mother a reality.
She'd merely devoted herself to others.
She'd practiced, with mindful intention, the care and concern which she hoped might one day be her ultimate remit in life. Though it was not in service to her own family, she found it no less rewarding: and she was accordingly blessed in her own ways.
Her flat was small. Her paycheques unimpressive. She couldn't be happier. There was no longer the sense of existential dread that she'd endured while studying at University, believing herself to be the only possible means of finding a cure for a truly heartbreaking disease. A cure would be found... or perhaps it never would be... but it was neither her responsibility, nor her right to feel herself the only possible solution to the problem. She'd come to find that reasoning to be a variety of hubris of the highest magnitude.
Who was she to waste time, years perhaps, in dusty tomes and gnawing at the end of a quill, staring off into space, pondering these questions, while people like Mary Forsythe were suffering without proper care, and while those like her dear husband Martin were languishing without an ear to listen nor a shoulder on which to cry.
No. Hermione was satisfied with her choices. She didn't need the constant applause of her professors to keep her going anymore. She didn't need to prove that she was smarter than all of the purebloods in Hogwarts combined. The returns were diminishing, the satisfaction minimal, that way of living—meaningless.
Thus, for each future meeting, the tone was set between her and her parents: most notably her mother. She would make her diligent appearance, take up her role, as ever, with as much dignity as she could muster. Her mother would publicly fawn over her, and if in private, despair of her—though never in such explicit words.
This time, as they drew away from the crowd, and Margaret was occasioned to pass an assessing glance over her daughter, she complimented her frock. It was seemingly genuine enough. Hermione herself knew it to be a rather becoming fit for her, as uncomfortable as it was.
"Is it silk, dear?" Her mother asked, her eyes alight with piqued interest.
"No—acetate I think."
"Oh," her mother clucked, clearly disappointed. "Pity. It's so lovely too. I'd about asked where you'd gotten it."
This was a favourite game. Margaret would encourage her daughter to put on some airs: anything that might prove that Hermione had a taste that would only be accommodated by a more luxurious or ambitious lifestyle and more money than she would ever conceivably make working as a social worker. Then, Hermione would usually shut down the conversation by serving her mother a helping of further disappointment.
Yes, she thought to herself: she had excellent taste. Taste that could be as well served at Primark as it could by the offerings found on the ready-to-wear racks at Harrods.
Keeping her lifestyle simple meant that she'd never outgrow what she was comfortable making. Should some brute ever come along, should she drop her career in favour of taking care of a newborn, even if were to be fifteen years in the future: she had a small enough footprint that she could make herself more valuable from home than she could be contributing what little she was earning.
She almost smiled to herself, because then she could volunteer her time in Waldweirness for free.
The small talk petered out after the failed overture about the fabric content of her dress. Her mother was clearly irritated, but she didn't allow her smile to falter, and her father, for his part, looked mildly sympathetic toward his daughter (though he'd never dare to challenge his wife, whether publicly or in private, over her opinions on Hermione's undertakings).
They were joined, at various points, by other members of either the Grangers' practice, or their acquaintances, and after a few more flutes of champagne, her mother evidently took it upon herself to make rather pointed commentary about Hermione's career prospects to just about anyone who would listen, or whom she thought might be well-positioned enough to offer her a more fruitful alternative.
Hermione, for her part, did her best to avoid blowing her top by stuffing her mouth with canapés at every available opportunity, washed down with whatever dark red wine she could get her hands on.
Robert watched on, his face a picture of ill-concealed dismay as he observed what he clearly thought would be a train-wreck in slow-motion. He made no moves to intercede on his daughter's behalf.
It was after the sixth such attempt that Hermione finally had met her limit for the evening. She was inebriated enough that she couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to a rather esteemed family member her mother was networking with on her behalf, but his face, betraying a look of mingled amusement and horror at her words, was enough to tell her that she'd best leave before she said something damning enough to do more than simply shame her mother in front of the titled members of her family.
Her heels clicked sharply on the tile as she made her way out—not quite storming, but close enough that it was clear to the rest of the room that she was beating a hasty retreat. At the entryway, she toppled dangerously on one of the shoes, but she caught herself before a member of the staff was able to assist her.
"I'm fine—really—I'm fine."
"Do you need us to call you a cab, ma'am?"
"No, thank you," she said, blushing a furious red—a combination of embarrassment and the amount of wine she'd imbibed. "I'll hail one on the street. Have a good evening," she finally managed.
Even drunk she was nothing if not polite.
"Your career, Hermione, when will you start your career?" she was muttering to herself as she pushed her way out of the restaurant. She was so steamed that even the December air did little to cool her fury.
As she stalked away, her ankles teeter-tottering above her uncharacteristically tall heels, she turned to screech at the unfeeling stone that was the façade of the restaurant: "HANG MY FUCKING CAREER!" She held out both hands toward those assembled within, her pointer and middle fingers on each held aloft in a double two-fingered salute.
When she whipped back around, she saw a woman, smaller even than her, and elderly, looking at her as if she'd quite lost her mind. Perhaps she had.
"Sorry— I'm not usually… Sorry, ma'am…" she excused herself, her expression sheepish.
She wasn't in a mood to hire another cab. She wasn't in a mood to make her way down the cracked pavement of Waldweirness on her perilous footwear. Instead, she allowed herself a luxury she'd never taken before, apparating directly into Eileen's kitchen.
Snape was seated at the kitchen table as she materialised, having forgone her normal walk. He was occupied, to her surprise, with a chunky laptop, around which he'd arranged a variety of implements: mouse, an additional keyboard, a lined notebook with a muggle pen, and what looked like a cassette player, from which the headphones rested slightly above his ears, where he'd moved them up and out of his way.
"Well don't you look... inviting." Snape commented drily, his eyes roaming from her feet, clad in heels, to the hair she'd laboured over for more than an hour earlier in the evening. He didn't seem to be leering at her. Rather judging her. She'd had quite enough of that for one evening.
Hermione felt her gorge rise, an uncharacteristic flush coming over her like a crimson tide. "I invite you to take a hike, Snape. I don't want to fucking hear it," she snapped, as she divested herself of first her beaded bag, and then each heel, in turn. She chucked the offending footwear at his feet and turned about, intent on spending the rest of her evening watching telly with his mother if he were in the type of mood to try and get her goat.
"You didn't call me 'Severus,'" he returned. His voice may have been even, but she thought she detected a note of disappointment.
"Perhaps I'm too tired of dealing with hypercritical pigs this evening to want to bother with paying you the compliment of using your name." She couldn't keep the quiver out of her voice as it raised in a slight bout of hysteria.
She didn't want to hear this from him. How dare he judge her—he hadn't a clue. He didn't know what it was to have a mother like she did. His was... well... For all of Eileen's faults, and all of her cowardice in protecting him as a child, she clearly cared for him a great deal.
She stalked out of the room but could almost swear she heard him murmuring to himself under his breath as she did so: "Ta, Hermione." His low voice held a note of bitter irony, or perhaps it was merely self-recrimination. She didn't want to care which.
As she settled on the sofa with her stockinged legs tucked and drawn up underneath her too-short dress, out of consideration for both comfort and modesty, Eileen surveilled her from underneath her lashes.
"He's just trying to take the piss, you know. He didn't mean anything by it."
"He's a grown man, I'll thank you not to defend him," she groused.
Eileen merely shrugged "He is, yes. He doesn't need me defending him. But I'm his mother. I know him. A lad he is no longer, true enough, but I don't think he meant to suggest what you might have been thinking—"
"That I'm tarted up, you mean?" Hermione asked, her eyes glued to the glass screen, though taking in little of the images flashing before her.
"My son's an idiot, girl. Particularly with women, it would seem. I'll spare you my interpretation of his words, but mark me that I doubt he had the intention to malign your character."
As she spoke, a short ejaculation of dismay could be heard coming from the very man about whom she was speaking. He stomped into the sitting room, using the twisted tip of his wand to siphon off some un-named liquid from the front of his shirt.
"Your damned table wobbles." He told his mother, his voice cross.
"Fix it." She tossed back, unconcerned. "You're a man. Shove something under the leg like your father used to—"
"I did better than that." He said, his voice acid. His eyes had flickered dangerously at the mention of his father. "The table's fixed—properly fixed, not like Tobias would do— but unless I go for some stain remover, there's no getting black coffee out of this," he commented, pulling at the light grey cardigan he was wearing.
Something about this struck Hermione as thoroughly disingenuous. There was no way that there wasn't a cleaning spell fit for the task, but when Eileen voiced the same objection, Snape insisted with mounting assuredness that he would simply have to go back to his flat and remedy the spill. He left the two women staring at each other in some confusion.
"Think he'll be back?" Hermione ventured, cautious. She wasn't at all sure what his departure had been about. Snape had a steady hand and didn't seem the sort to spill coffee all over himself, nor to not want to demonstrate that he was magically adept enough to clean himself with a simple laundering charm.
Eileen herself appeared worried on this score. She glanced over the back of the settee into the doorframe leading to the kitchen. "His little gadgets are all still there—he'll have to come back..." It sounded as if she were trying to reassure herself rather than Hermione.
They filled the resulting silence with small chatter about Waldweirness and a bit of snark from Eileen about Hermione's dress.
For some reason, Eileen's judgement struck her as funny, where the appraising glances from her parent's cohorts and Snape's evaluation had infuriated her. Eileen was rather old-fashioned and, for some reason, that didn't bother her one whit.
"All I'm saying, girl, is that you could transfigure the hem to be a bit longer—then you'd not have to sit like that," she said with a disdainful sniff, indicating Hermione's curled under legs with a contemptuous flourish of her hand.
Hermione grinned back. "You know, I'm not fond of this dress at all, to be honest. I'd rather I never saw it again—I'll do you one better." She withdrew her vine wood wand and used it to elongate the fabric into a sort of long skirt, which then, separating at the center, she reattached into a simulacrum of trousers. The entire ensemble shrunk to be snug about her legs and arms, and she modified the front with a row of buttons. In all, she now appeared to be wearing a pair of long johns, but curiously, made of a silk-like material.
Eileen appeared more scandalized than she had before.
"What on earth—!?"
But before she could finish her sentence, the crack of apparition could be heard coming from the kitchen. Snape stalked back inside, wearing a fresh long-sleeved t-shirt with a truly questionable graphic on the front.
He stood, stock still under the gaze of the two witches he'd interrupted, his eyes challenging and his lips a hard line. It was an utterly incongruous image he presented
: his face—serious as the grave. His shirt—comically absurd.
On the front of the odd garment there was some sort of strange creature: all black about the face and snub-nosed muzzle, with wide-set but perfectly round and bulging black eyes. From within the grimacing black lips protruded a sharp set of two fangs and a row of small pointy teeth, arranged in a subtle underbite.
The over-all effect produced the impression of a very obstinate demon of some sort. Perhaps painted by some medieval artist imagining the occupants of hell... that, or a very ugly type of dog. Its face was wreathed with a mane of black hair going in all directions, but in scale, it was small, and surrounded by attending demons far more monstrous than the beast itself was. Yet, for all that, it appeared to be their leader. The text over the graphic was in a highly stylized font that read: 'RUN TO THE HILLS,' and underneath, in a smaller plain text ' GALDRVALE 2002 expansion.'
"What on earth are you wearing?"Hermione gasped finally, inadvertently finishing Eileen's initial question that had been posed toward herself. The corners of her mouth twitched, and she tried to quell the rising urge to laugh, but ultimately found the effort futile. She eventually erupted into a riot of giggles.
Snape only stood stock still and glared at her, his eyes almost malignant. "It's all that was clean."
It must have been the stress of the day going to her head, but she began laughing so hard she cried, having to bury her face against the upholstery to wipe the tears away. Eileen, for her part, merely seemed confused, yet disapproving all the same. She looked at the shirt as if it would come alive to bite her, or as if she found it utterly indecent and vulgar.
"And I thought Ms. Granger's transfigured long underwear was bad. I suppose good taste has flown the coop for the evening," she remarked, her voice tight and critical. She removed herself from the sofa with prim dignity and stalked away to retire to bed, closing the door with a resounding snap behind her.
This dampened Hermione's mirth a bit. She and Snape were left staring at one another.
"Think she'll be back?" Hermione asked, feeling as if it was a repeat of her earlier conversation with Snape's mother.
He merely shrugged and moved to join her on the sofa. "She's probably decided she's had enough of us both for the nonce."
Sitting this close, Hermione noticed that the shirt had white text running down each arm as well: 'RUN TO THE HILLS – RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.'
"So..." Hermione began, eying him. "What areyou wearing?"
"A promotional item from a few years back. We only sold a limited run of them, alongside a key for in-game redeemable content. Naturally, I was entitled to my own." His voice was tight, as if he was embarrassed. Yet, he bared himself to her scrutiny all the same, shifting with discomfort though he was.
It occurred to Hermione now why his whole act had seemed to her so disingenuous. The coffee spill, the elaborate excuse to go and change his clothes, the lie that he had nothing else to wear: he was getting even with her. He was giving her a reason to judge his attire as he perceived he'd judged her own.
It was the oddest apology that she thought she'd ever been recipient to. The oddest, and perhaps, the dearest.
His ears were turning red at the tips, and he allowed her only another few seconds more of her silent perusal of his person before he tried to recloak himself in his abandoned dignity.
"It was all that was clean." He lied again.
"Yeah, you'd said," she acknowledged. She could have been derisive, but instead she tried for a rather more charitable voice. She glanced away from him. "What's even on this late at night, anyway?" she asked, her voice directed at the television.
He sighed, perhaps in relief at the reprieve she offered. "I think I've been catching ancient reruns of Midsomer Murders the last few nights around this hour..."
"Perfect." She felt unsure of herself, so she rose off the sofa and made her way to the kitchen, falling back on her tried-and-true bossy dictates to ease what had felt like some sort of strange and mounting tension. "You set the channel, I'll get us some popcorn going."
"And ciders." He insisted, his voice grudging and slightly petulant.
She smiled back at him from the doorframe, feeling a sort of fondness for the man coming over her. "And ciders." She agreed, all indulgence.
"Throw my rope, loop-de-loop
Nice white teeth, Betty Boop"
"Drop Dead Legs" (reprise) – Van Halen
A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing *heart* ^_^
"Run to the Hills" is another Iron Maiden song.